Terrorists, Pornographers, and Mothers-to-be: Should (pregnant) women expect less privacy?

That's the working title for a paper I'm close to wrapping up in my Women & Health Law seminar this semester. Thanks to Profs Krause and Tovino at the UH Health Law & Policy Institute, I've had the chance to learn more about health privacy issues in general, HIPAA in-depth, and particular concerns about women's healthcare this semester.

So, what do mothers-to-be have in common with suspected terrorists and pornographers? You'll just have to wait until I'm done with the paper to find out the details. For now, I will drop a few hints by way of some valuable sources:

• Prof Daniel J. Solove @ GWU, the blawgger behind ConcurringOpinions, is also a prolific author on privacy issues. His book, The Digital Person, is a must-read.
• Prof Richard C. Turkington, who taught at Villanova for several years, left behind a wealth of information on the development of some of the privacy laws we see today, including this Privacy Primer.
• Prof Christopher Slobogin @ U of Florida recently wrote on Transaction Surveillance by the Government, 75 Miss. L. J. 139 (2005) , where he noted that:

despite a bewildering array of statutorily created authorization requirements, transaction surveillance is subject to far less regulation than either physical surveillance of activities inside the home or communications surveillance.

• ABC News just recently reported on the growing problem of Medical Identity Theft.
• And, of course, I couldn't help noticing Judge Ware's comment about possible disclosures resulting from the Google search subpoena:

while a user's search query reading "[user name] stanford glee club" may not raise serious privacy concerns, a user's search for "[user name] third trimester abortion san jose" may raise certain privacy issues as yet unaddressed . . .

---See Gonzales v. Google, Order Granting in Part and Denying in Part Motion to Compel Compliance with Subpoena Duces Tucem (Mar. 17, 2006)

Stay tuned.